Have you set resolutions for the New Year? What a perfect opportunity to “chunk it up”—that is, take your larger resolutions and create specific, month-by-month action plans that will nudge you on to greater accomplishment throughout the year!
But even more than that, you can attract greater feelings of abundance and flow into your life by using a very powerful measure for success! Cosmic timing is to some a fateful happenstance that seemingly, randomly occurs. However, what if I told you there was a way to harness the power of cosmic timing to increase your chances of greater accomplishment in life? What would you say if I told you that millions of people have been doing this for eons with great success? You may be surprised to learn that this is a very simple technique that can be implemented into your daily routine.
When you are striving to achieve your goals, first you must have a clear purpose in mind. Next, you can use the moon’s energies to catapult you toward success simply by coordinating your actions to those energies of the lunar phases. Setting your goals around the cycles of the moon increases your chances of success for a number of reasons. First, you are using the natural rhythms of the Cosmos much like airliners use the jet streams to make air travel more efficient. Second, it’s really not that unusual when you consider farmers and fishers (i.e. The Farmer’s Almanac…); our ancestors have been planting their successful crops according to the lunar cycles for centuries, and fishers use the phases of the moon to determine the best times to head out to sea and cast their nets for an abundant catch. From eons of using the moon’s cycles for personal empowerment, we know the following to be true:
New Moon to Full Moon: This is a great time for blessings, plantings and of personal growth. This is a time of action and for making constructive changes. Your focus should be on new projects, ideas and goals that require “growth.” This is a time of new beginnings, and an excellent time to incorporate healing into your life.
Full Moon to New Moon: This is a time to reflect and meditate on inner/emotional workings. This is also a time to overcome emotional blockages, to banish negativity, and to get rid of bad habits, hurtful relationships, harmful behaviors or ideas and attitudes and to clear the way for any healing to occur. Your focus should be on releasing and letting go of the unwanted, outgrown and no longer necessary.
The moon’s energies are very real, and when used correctly, will increase feelings of flow and abundance in your life.
So here it is, me planning workshops on de-cluttering and space clearing for energetic healing, and just the other night, I was made painfully aware of my emotional attachment to an object, my piano. This piano sits in my open living room, host to the family and ancestor photos, and has, of late become the entry way catch all. The lid is closed, covering the well-loved ivory keys, and it makes a perfect tray for all those things we carry in from our outings, i.e. sunglass, car keys, purses.
Barry and I were discussing the upcoming cleansing and decluttering we want to perform on our house, to open up our space for new and clear energy to enter into our lives and help us with our manifestation goals for the coming year. Then he mentioned that he wanted to get rid of the piano. "First," he said, "no one ever plays it anymore, and it just seems to be a magnet for all kinds of clutter. Being that it sits in the open floor plan, it contributes to a messy looking front room."
I started to tear up. I felt a lump swell in my throat and tears began streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t understand why I became so emotional about this, because the truth is that he was right. The piano no longer serves its function, and we really needed to have this discussion. But I couldn’t talk. All I could think about was the day I found the piano and how proud I was to be able to bring it home.
The piano was, for me, a sign of my independence. My first marriage ended in a divorce, and I went through a really tough time wondering if I would ever see my way through to financial comfort again. It took me over two years to feel like I was back on top and was ready to buy a house. My own house. But I had no furniture and the house was a one hundred year old home that just called for furniture to match its character. The first antiques dealer I stopped at had this beautiful piano sitting in the back corner. I played my own version of Chopsticks and was immediately hooked. I bought it and soon, my kids were plinking and plunking on the keys, filling our new home with the charming (and off-key) sounds of childhood piano lessons. It was something the entire family enjoyed, and that made my purchase even more special to me. Not only did the piano represent my independence as a single mom, but I was so proud and happy to be able to provide my children with this “frivolous” opportunity for enrichment.
That was nearly ten years ago and I never shared this story with Barry. It never seemed like I needed to. When I moved in with him, I came with my furniture, including the piano--and there was a perfect wall to place it against and that was that. Unfortunately, since I moved in here, the piano is very rarely played. My oldest two daughters have moved out of the house (they are 22 and 20), and no longer play the piano anyway. The other kids are interested in other instruments. Come to think of it, the piano has not been tuned since I moved in.
But I never once considered getting rid of the piano. It never crossed my mind.
When faced with this reality, it became clear to me that I had been hanging on to this piece of furniture for impractical reasons. I moved it across the country, and then again in three different houses over the last ten years. But I am just now re-examining my feelings associated with it. Yes, I am way too emotionally attached to this piece. I sure was not expecting the emotional response I experienced. As I map out my plan for de-cluttering the house, I need to reconsider how the piano contributes to the perpetual "virtual" mess we wish to do away with.
But for now, during the holidays, I will open the lid on the keys, and hopefully someone will be inspired to tickle the keys and fill the house with the sounds of holiday cheer.
I was destined for laughter yoga! In fact, my nickname was Giggles when I was a little girl, because I would and could laugh at just about anything! As I got older and faced the responsibilities of adulthood, it seemed I found fewer and fewer reasons to laugh. I had more important things to worry about--mortgage, money, bills, lawn care...you know, life! I found myself repeating mistakes and life's lessons constantly presenting themselves to me. I denied my own inner truth, tried to run from my problems, found myself in toxic relationships, hating my job, dissatisfied with much in life...then I suffered a TIA, i.e. a mini stroke. It was not devastating or life threatening, but it was enough to stop me in my tracks and wake me up to the fact that in my pursuit of "living the dream," I was neglecting the most important thing of all--my health! (For without health, we have nothing!)
As we get older, we tend to lose our child-like wonder and playfulness. As children, we didn’t need permission to laugh. But what happens to us? What hardens our attitudes? Why do we find it so hard to find wonder and joy in the simple pleasures of life? As we get older, we take on responsibility like marriage, jobs, caring for a family, bill paying, mowing the yard, taking out the trash…all these things can add stress to our lives!
Isn’t it funny, though (no pun intended) that most of us maintain a sense of sarcasm in our everyday communication? To many (myself included!) sarcasm can be funny. But did you know sarcasm is rooted in anger?
I believe sarcasm is a mask we wear in order to protect the ego. When the ego is engaged, we care too much about how others perceive us. Sarcasm allows us to express pent up rage in a “safe” manner—we are not directly “attacking” anyone, we get to express ourselves and we elicit a laugh from others (albeit, most usually a nervous, timid laugh...) And this is okay, to an extent. But when it becomes so common that sarcasm is part of your personality, the use of sarcasm can be detrimental to your emotional wellbeing.
What we need to do is shed the mask, let go of ego and laugh for no reason! Not everyone is comfortable with laughing for no reason. Many of us need to watch a comedian or a funny movie or listen to a joke in order to make us laugh. To combat this hurdle, here’s a trick you can do…give yourself permission to laugh. And then, just do it! And remember, laughing for no reason is a skill that gets better with practice.
Fortunately for me, and through a strange cosmic synchronicity, I found laughter yoga shortly after my TIA experience. It was the answer to my hardened attitude and today, I laugh-- ALOT! With practice, laughing for no reason becomes natural (and the benefits to your health are amazing! But that is another topic for another blog post!)
If you would like to incorporate more laughter into your life, join me in January as I will be providing one-on-one laughter yoga coaching.
Be sure to sign up for my weekly newsletter. It's filled with articles and information to help you reach your personal goals, rediscover the magic of life, and remember how to laugh for no reason!
The lymphatic system is a mesh-like network of very fine vessels running parallel to the venous system. It is composed of a superficial system located immediately beneath the skin and above the muscles and also a deep system that drains lymph from bones, muscles and joints. Unlike the circulatory system which has the heart to pump the blood in a continuous circle to all parts of the body, the lymphatic system has no pump, moves by inertia in a semi-circular manner, always moving toward the heart.
Basically, the lymphatic system is a highly efficient cleaning system that is the backbone of the immune system. It continuously collects waste materials from all over the body that are deposited in the tissues via blood capillaries. It then cleans that fluid and returns it back into the blood circulation. Interspersed along the lymphatic pathways, primarily in the armpit, neck, chest, abdomen and groin, are clusters of “cleaning stations”, the lymph nodes, specializing in producing white blood cells (lymphocytes) to clean the fluid, antibodies to defend against future predators, and macrophages to remove all manner of unwanted debris. The clean, healthy fluid is then returned to the blood.
So, what does laughter have to do with it? Very simply this….remember, the lymphatic system has no pump; however, it is capable of being manually moved. The largest lymphatic collecting site in the body is the thoracic duct, located immediately adjacent to the diaphragm. Research has shown that diaphragmatic breathing creates a negative pressure within the thorax, literally sucking lymph into the duct which is then shot out into the rest of the body at up to 15 times the normal flow of lymph. Laughter is the easiest and simplest form of diaphragmatic breathing!
The idea is to MOVE….move your body, move your breath. Any muscular movement will stimulate the flow of lymph, but laughter kicks it out the door! Obviously, any form of laughter is beneficial, but the sustained laughter which is experienced in Laughter Yoga is even that much better. It really gets the lymph moving.
Adapted from an article by Sue Ansari RN, BS, CLT-LANA
Throughout my life I have been attracted to all sequences of numbers that reduce down to the number five, and one of my favorite numbers ever is the number 23. (2+3=5). When I see such a sequence of numbers, or the number five itself, it makes me smile. I take this as an omen that something good is coming my way.
Of course, this whole attraction to the number five could be a case of the “chicken or the egg” in that I look for these numbers because five happens to be my birth number and I am unconsciously tapping into them, ignoring all the others. In this case, it could be argued, I learned at an early age what my birth number is, and five made a favorable imprint on me. Therefore, I choose to smile when I see five because, in essence, it is me.
Or, it could simply be that I am in tune, happily vibrating to the number five, noticing it’s cameo appearances throughout the real-time script that is my life. Again, however, this suggests that five and me are one and the same.
Either way, over the years, I’ve put a lot of thought into the meaning of the number five. A lot of time philosophising about its significance in my own life and it’s impact.
When I was younger, I learned that the number five could be interpretred as a “chaotic vibration.” In numerology, the number five describes instability and unpredictability. All of these things seemed to have negative connotations to me, and actually made me fearful of the number at first. But then…life happens. And you grow and you learn. And in my case, I’ve taken this number very seriously to the point that I have a new interpretation.
I like to think of “5″ as pushing the boundaries in order to realize it’s full potential. Five never settles for what anyone says things should be like. Five knows there is more out there. Five is not chaos–it is being in a place where you are ready to “go on.”
While four is stagnation and boredom, a taking for granted one’s station in life, five is the awareness of that boredom and the action that results to change it.
A shift.
A change.
A marked difference from the established old rules.
Five is new–but not new. It is the traditional new–it builds upon four’s solid foundations to keep what was working, and it tears down four’s apathy and redesigns what wasn’t working.
Five infuses new energy into the structure and five asks, “what else can this be? What have we overlooked before (befour)? What were we afraid to bring forth (fourth) up until now? What new stories must be told? What new cycles unfold? Where can we go from here?”
Five is scary to a four. Five is has the spirit of a pioneer and with that, comes responsibility.
Five is the new age.
Five is the counterculture.
Five is the new one.
Beautiful, bold and brazen. Revolutionary.
And six? Six is the culmination of “right rewards.”
But five is the courage to make six happen.
|
RSS Feed